Hidden Voices
With his remarkable second solo album, Vox Occulta, Leprous’s Einar Solberg may not have found the meaning of life, but he might just have realised his dream of creating the most cinematic music in all of prog. He reveals it’s all about embracing chaos, randomness, orcs, orchestras, and the beauty of melancholy.
Words: David West
The name is Solberg. Einar Solberg!
Images: Leo Liberty
“The more I learn about myself, the more I realise I didn’t know,” says Einar Solberg. “When it comes to knowledge about your inner life, I think nobody quite figures that out in a full lifetime even if they dig deep enough, so there is always more to get.”
With his second solo album, the Leprous frontman delves into his own psyche, mining out emotions both dark and light across eight songs. Vox Occulta, Latin for ‘hidden voice’, is a fitting title for a record that finds Solberg trying to understand his own negative impulses while reaching for catharsis.
“Vox Occulta is about the hidden, dark voice in me,” he says. “No matter how much mental work I’ve done, it never completely leaves. I can silence it and it’s not necessarily the dark voice that makes me feel bad about myself, but it’s the dark voice that makes me say stuff that I regret, that makes me do things that I regret, makes me angry about useless stuff; the destructive voice inside of me which has been a lot stronger at some points of my life. At the moment it’s there but pretty well controlled. I’ve accepted that it comes to say ‘hi’ here and there.”
Half of the album’s songs feature the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, whose presence reflects the artist’s desire to become, in his words, the most cinematic person in prog. As expansive as Leprous can be, an orchestra might present a daunting prospect for a songwriter schooled in the world of drums and guitars. Or maybe not.